Of my own interest, I read rather a lot of books on Psychology, in high
school and for a time after. By the time Keirsey's first edition of
"Please Understand Me" came out, I had stopped those readings.

More recently, after what amounts to a prolonged social accident, I
started readings around psychology, again. Read the latest of Keirsey's
books, and suddenly the prior confusing social episode seemed to make
sense.

The year 1978 was when Keirsey's first edition book on personality types
appeared, and the year I started at the University of California, Irvine
(as a third-year student).

My major was in Physics, but one of my "breadth" areas was Psychology. I
took the introductory courses but, because my prior readings were
essentially in advance of the entire first year, I did not have to
study, and did not interact with the other students in the class. After
that I took more specialized courses in Psychology, which the general
run of students avoided.

The joker here is that Keirsey's book, and the more recent social
accident, suggest that my strongest match in personality might have been
among those students of Psychology. Wish I had known...

Add to this Keirsey was at the California State University, Fullerton
for quite a long time. That school is within walking distance of the
house in Placentia, where I grew up. After 1978 - the time of Keirsey's
first book on the subject, I spent very little time there. But in the
time between ... I wonder how many times are paths wove near.

If I had happened to take courses there, might we have met?

At University, I met a girl. Later we married, had kids, and ... were
not remotely suited. I only knew that I had chose poorly, but had not
the slightest clue how to choose well. Divorced. Dated for a time, with
poor result, then stopped.

On the early social web, ran into a woman - thousands of miles away - to
whom emotionally I was very strongly attracted. Made no sense. We seemed
very different. Thought it was whack. We ended up talking quite a lot,
but I did not understand her personality at all ... as I had no prior
experience with that sort. I thoroughly fucked up the conversation. Very
much a glitch.

Bit later, occurred to me that I really did not understand different
sorts of personalities, so started readings on Psychology, again. In
Keirsey's book found my personality sort (easy), found ... and started
to understand ... the glitch-woman's personality sort. In the part of
the book speculating on compatibility, Keirsey thought those two sorts
might be the strongest of all matches.

Oh.

Read his book about a year or so before he died. Would rather we have
overlapped a bit more.

[later...]

Just to add another layer, chatted briefly with Keirsey's son, who it
turns out was a UCI at the same time as I, and likely much of the time
in the same buildings. Our paths were just enough apart we may never have
met, but only just. Odd echoes.